Advances in communication technologies, fueled, in part, by consumer demands, continually challenge telecommunications service providers to introduce new and ever increasing number of services and product offerings. For example, given their reliance on the global Internet as a business tool as well as a vehicle for news and entertainment, these consumers seek a cost-effective solution to obtain secure broadband, wireless, and Internet services, and other advanced services including Internet Protocol (IP) telephony. Conversely, the service providers aim to deploy new services without having to commit, on routine basis, to development new hardware.
The popularity and convenience of the Internet has resulted in the reinvention of traditional telephony services. These services are offered over a packet switched network with minimal or no cost to the users. IP telephony, thus, have found significant success, particularly in the long distance market. In general, IP telephony, which is also referred to as Voice-over-IP (VoIP), is the conversion of voice information into data packets that are transmitted over an IP network. Users also have turned to IP telephony as a matter of convenience in that both voice and data services are accessible through a single piece of equipment, namely a personal computer. Furthermore, traditional analog phones can enjoy the benefits of VoIP technology through the use of network adapters. The continual integration of voice and data services further drives this demand for IP telephony applications. Such integration stems, in part, from the emergence of ubiquitous broadband services.
Because of the ever growing sophistication in communication services, traditional approaches to supplying a secure broadband service require numerous components to be purchased and maintained by the consumers. In other words, whether a customer desires simple Internet access or a firewall for their local area network (LAN), the customer is forced, under conventional service deployments, to support many different pieces of equipment in their network. For the consumers at large, commercial and residential, the continual addition of new hardware for each new service or feature is burdensome, not only in terms of cost, but time and effort to install and maintain new equipment and associated software.
Therefore, there is a need for supporting a multiplicity of communication services, conveniently and cost-effectively. There is also a need to avoid costly development of new hardware to deploy new services and features.